Pages

Monday, October 3, 2011

Hispanic unemployment highest in Providence, Hartford

18 metro areas see
increase of Hispanic unemployment from 2009 to 2010

Click to Enlarge

Providence,
Rhode Island and Hartford, Connecticut have the first (25.2%) and second
(23.5%) highest unemployment rates, respectively, for Hispanics among 38 large
metropolitan areas* nationwide, according to a report released today by the
Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

In
2010, the two highest Hispanic metropolitan unemployment rates were in New
England: Hispanic unemployment was 25.2 percent in Providence, R.I., and 23.5
percent in Hartford, Connecticut. For Providence, 2010 was the second year in a
row Hispanics had an unemployment rate over 20 percent.

Hispanics
in the Hartford metropolitan area were 3.4 times as likely as whites to be
unemployed. In Providence, Hispanics were 2.5 times as likely as whites to be
unemployed.

Five
California metropolitan areas made it into the top 10 metropolitan areas with
the highest Hispanic unemployment rates: Fresno, Bakersfield, Riverside, San
Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Six
Texas metropolitan areas were among the 10 with the lowest Hispanic
unemployment rates: Laredo, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, El Paso, Houston, and
Austin.

Washington,
D.C., had the lowest Hispanic unemployment rate.

“The
findings from EPI’s study are a reminder that while the jobs crisis affects the
entire nation, many communities are facing a true state of emergency,” said
Catherine Singley, Senior Policy Analyst at the National Council of La Raza—the
largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United
States. “Government cannot stand on the sidelines when so many are denied
a chance at the American Dream. Beginning with the President’s jobs bill,
policymakers must take bold action to create jobs, with deliberate measures to
target areas hit hardest by unemployment.”

*
Unemployment rate estimates were created for metropolitan areas that had a
sufficient Hispanic sample size in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current
Population Survey for reliable estimates in 2007.